Horrible AutoTextList Behavior

[PathDaemon]

I just upgraded to 2004 and I'm having problems with an autotextlist
field I use in my main template. The code is

{AutoTextList \s "Categories" \t "Control-click to select catagory" }

Unfortunately, unless AutoText is set to only look in my template, it
shows _every AutoText entry in Normal!!_. This makes no sense! Also, new
documents by default use normal, so the AutoText list isn't useful
unless, for each document, I change the setting. And that also disables
Normal AutoText entries! This is horribly annoying and confusing... what
can I do?

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah, it's not good, is it! And there's little you can do about it.

Your problem may well be that the style "Categories" does not exist in the
document. If you create a style named that, things may come right for you.

One thing you can try is this:

1) Dump all of your current wanted AutoText items into a blank document

2) Create a special style (Yours is apparently named "Categories") for the
purpose. It can be a Character style, and does not need to contain any
formatting: we're only going to use it as a label. So create a style named
"Categories", set its Type to Character and leave everything else in the
dialog untouched.

3) Apply the special style to all of the AutoText entries.

4) Redefine each of the AutoText Entries.

Now your list will show you only the AutoText entries created using the
named style.

I don't use this myself: I use AutoText rarely, and when I do, I make a
macro that inserts each specific AutoText.

Hope this helps

I just upgraded to 2004 and I'm having problems with an autotextlist
field I use in my main template. The code is

{AutoTextList \s "Categories" \t "Control-click to select catagory" }

Unfortunately, unless AutoText is set to only look in my template, it
shows _every AutoText entry in Normal!!_. This makes no sense! Also, new
documents by default use normal, so the AutoText list isn't useful
unless, for each document, I change the setting. And that also disables
Normal AutoText entries! This is horribly annoying and confusing... what
can I do?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[PathDaemon]

Your problem may well be that the style "Categories" does not exist in the
document. If you create a style named that, things may come right for you.

One thing you can try is this:

1) Dump all of your current wanted AutoText items into a blank document

2) Create a special style (Yours is apparently named "Categories") for the
purpose. It can be a Character style, and does not need to contain any
formatting: we're only going to use it as a label. So create a style named
"Categories", set its Type to Character and leave everything else in the
dialog untouched.

3) Apply the special style to all of the AutoText entries.

4) Redefine each of the AutoText Entries.

Now your list will show you only the AutoText entries created using the
named style.

Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, this isn't the problem.
From the beginning, I was using the categories style for the entries.
And (I didn't say this clearly enough in my last post) if I set AutoText
to use entries only from my template (the list is put in a template I
use for almost all of my documents), the list works perfectly. But when
it is set (as it is in all new documents, no matter what the template)
to use AutoText entries from all templates, every entry in Normal is
displayed. It is as if the style of AutoText entries in Normal doesn't
matter to the list.

Thanks in advance to anyone who knows what's wrong.

-PD

 

[John McGhie]

You have not told me how you applied that template to the new documents.

What should happen is that the AutoText should be picked from the "Closest
Context" to the document. If the template is "attached" to the document,
the attached template is enumerated before the entries in the Normal
template. Word takes the first correctly-named entries it sees.

If the template is a global add-in that is not attached to the new document,
then the context follows the sequence of the templates mentioned in the
Global Add-Ins section of the Attach Template dialog, and Normal is first.

Could that be what is happening?

I am sorry, I simply do not have time to research this properly for you
right now: anyone else?

Cheers

Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, this isn't the problem.
From the beginning, I was using the categories style for the entries.
And (I didn't say this clearly enough in my last post) if I set AutoText
to use entries only from my template (the list is put in a template I
use for almost all of my documents), the list works perfectly. But when
it is set (as it is in all new documents, no matter what the template)
to use AutoText entries from all templates, every entry in Normal is
displayed. It is as if the style of AutoText entries in Normal doesn't
matter to the list.

Thanks in advance to anyone who knows what's wrong.

-PD

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[PathDaemon]

You have not told me how you applied that template to the new documents.

What should happen is that the AutoText should be picked from the "Closest
Context" to the document. If the template is "attached" to the document,
the attached template is enumerated before the entries in the Normal
template. Word takes the first correctly-named entries it sees.

If the template is a global add-in that is not attached to the new document,
then the context follows the sequence of the templates mentioned in the
Global Add-Ins section of the Attach Template dialog, and Normal is first.

Could that be what is happening?

I am sorry, I simply do not have time to research this properly for you
right now: anyone else?

Cheers

Thank you for the time you _have_ given me. To anyone else: the template
is in My Templates, so I use it for new documents from the project
gallery.

-PD

 

[John McGhie]

Go to Tools>Templates and Add-ins>Attach... In one of the documents. What
do you see? I am wondering whether the template in question is not
correctly "attached". That would produce the problem...

Thank you for the time you _have_ given me. To anyone else: the template
is in My Templates, so I use it for new documents from the project
gallery.

-PD

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[PathDaemon]

Go to Tools>Templates and Add-ins>Attach... In one of the documents. What
do you see? I am wondering whether the template in question is not
correctly "attached". That would produce the problem...

I looked there. The template was not listed (I would assume this as the
template is the document template), but attaching it doesn't help.

 

[John McGhie]

If the template is not listed in Tools>Templates and Add-ins... In the top
box as the "Document Template", then it is not "attached" and there is your
problem.

If the template is listed there as the document template then it is
correctly attached and we need to look further.

When you're snipping, please don't snip out the rest of the thread: I can't
remember a week later what the question was Ah, yes... Your form field
is getting all the the autotext entries in Normal Template.

OK, open your Normal Template as a document (i.e. Use File>Open to open it.)

Now go to Insert>AutoText...

When the dialog box appears, there's a grey line across the top and a list
of "categories" below. That list is the names of the styles in which those
AutoText entries have been defined.

If there is no list there, they're all defined as either "Normal" style or
"no style", which is the cause of the problem. You need to redefined all of
the existing autotext entries to have a style other than Normal or your
AutoText style name.

Hope this makes sense.

I looked there. The template was not listed (I would assume this as the
template is the document template), but attaching it doesn't help.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[PathDaemon]

Sorry for the delay in responding.
Unfortunately, my AutoText window is not as you describe it. I see a
number of AutoComplete options in the top half of the window, and in the
bottom half is a box labeled "Enter AutoText Entries Here:". Inside the
box is a text field, a list of entries, a preview box, a "look in"
template pulldown menu, and add, delete, insert, and "show toolbar"
buttons. I'm using Word 2004.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi:

I took you to three different places: I was describing Word 2004.

1) Go to the Tools menu and choose Templates and Add-ins...

What is the name of the Document Template shown in that window? That's the
template that Word will look in first for AutoText entries. If it is
something other than Normal template, it gives you an extra round of
possible problems.

2) Now you can go to Insert>AutoText>AutoText (note, AutoText twice...)

If the "Look In" field there is set to anything other than "All Active
Templates", Word will not see AutoText entries in any other template. That
setting is stored with the document and persists from editing session to
editing session.

3) If you go to Insert>AutoText (only one AutoText...) you see a different
display. There are two levels of fly-out menus. The first lists the style
names for which AutoText entries have been stored in the Current
Customisation Context (i.e. In the Template nominated in the "Look In" field
of step 2.

The second fly out lists the autotext entries defined for the style chosen
in the first. Now THIS is what I regard to be the truly "horrible" part of
the new AutoText interface. It was supposed to make it easier for us by
showing only the AutoText entries appropriate to the style under the
insertion point at the time.

Instead, it wastes a lot of yours and my time and leads to hundreds of "I
can't find my AutoText" queries in here. But they won't take it away
because they think it's "easier".

Yet again, they have attempted to hide complexity from us, and in doing so
have made the product difficult to use. Anyone who used WordPerfect will
tell you that the average secretary could remember hundreds of really
complex codes to be typed in the document to solve various problems. Yes,
it was complicated, but because it was all right there in front of your
face, users soon learned the techniques and used the product with great
skill. More than half of the users who had greater than three years
experience with WordPerfect were at an 'Expert' user level.

The designers of Microsoft Word decided to make things "easy" by simplifying
the user interface to show only the simplistic functions used by people who
basically have failed to learn to use ANY word-processor. Since the detail
is now hidden, those users are prevented from getting any better! You can't
learn what you can't see! As a result, 80 per cent of Word users are now
incapable of using the product effectively for "basic" word processing.
Less than one per cent can reliably produce a long document with it. I
don't think that's a great advance for science.

Although it does enable ME to charge fat fees as a consultant

Cheers

Sorry for the delay in responding.
Unfortunately, my AutoText window is not as you describe it. I see a
number of AutoComplete options in the top half of the window, and in the
bottom half is a box labeled "Enter AutoText Entries Here:". Inside the
box is a text field, a list of entries, a preview box, a "look in"
template pulldown menu, and add, delete, insert, and "show toolbar"
buttons. I'm using Word 2004.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[PathDaemon]

I completely agree with you about Word's approach to complexity. If a
program has this many features, it's best to either lay them all out in
front of the user and let them learn as they wish, or to arrange them so
that the easier commands are easily accessed and the harder ones are
just one level deeper. That's what I love about OS X's approach: new
users can just use Simple Finder, System Prefs, and installer packages
and get along fine, while people like me can easily use the command
line, install modifications, etc. With Office... every time I upgrade
they've stuffed more capability in and made it all more "intelligent"
and less accessible. Everything I've begun to master is stuffed deeper
into stranger dialogue boxes.

But as far as this issue...
The document template is not Normal, it's the template I base most of my
documents on, the template with the AutoTextList.
Look in is set to "All Active Templates."
----
While writing this, I just accidentally solved my problem. In
experimenting with your suggestions, I decided to take another look at
my AutoTextList code. It was originally this:
{ AutoTextList \s "Categories" \t "Control-click to select catagory" }
On a hunch, I removed the quotes from the style name. To my immense
surprise, Word now shows the entries perfectly. Syntax...

John, thank you for the help you have given me. Though it turned out to
be an annoyingly simple problem, you gave good advice. I'll keep working
on my Word knowledge. Good luck on your consulting: I'm sure you'll be
needed more with each upgrade.

-Sidney

 

[PathDaemon]

Aahh! It seems I spoke too soon! For no apparent reason, the list is
back to displaying everything. Now I just feel like I'm being annoying...
But I guess it's easy to annoy when discussing problems with Microsoft
problems...